Wendy Craig

Wendy Craig (born 20 June 1934) is a BAFTA Award winning English actress who is best known for her appearances in the sitcoms Butterflies, ...And Mother Makes Three and ...And Mother Makes Five. She currently plays the recurring role of Matron in popular TV series The Royal .

Biography

She was born in Sacriston, County Durham and attended Durham High School for Girls, which she re-visited on October 13 2007 when she opened a new building named after her. She began her career in British films at the end of the 1950s, and appeared in films such as The Servant (1963) and The Nanny (1965) with Bette Davis, but it was in British sitcoms of the late 1960s and 1970s which led to her becoming a household name, usually playing a scatty middle-class housewife. She went from the BBC's Not in Front of the Children (1967) to ITV's ...And Mother Makes Three (1971) (in which she played a single parent), which later evolved into ...And Mother Makes Five. Then came Butterflies (1978), a comedy on BBC2, in which Craig's character was given more depth than in the earlier series.

Wendy Craig returned to drama with the series Nanny in 1981 - a show she created herself - and currently plays a hospital matron in ITV's The Royal. However, she continues to be associated with comedy, having taken one of the leading roles as Annie in Brighton Belles, the UK's short-lived version of The Golden Girls.

She appeared as Reggie's mother in the BBC1 comedy Reggie Perrin (2009), an update of the 1970s series The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin.

Personal life

She was married to Jack Bentley from 1955 until his death in 1994. They had two sons and one daughter. In 2004, it was revealed that her second son was the result of a short affair with John Mortimer.^[1]

Sources and references

External links

• Wendy Craig at the Internet Movie Database
• Wendy Craig at the Museum of Broadcast Communications